Harmon’s Histories: Missoula’s Mansion and its many historic connections
Jim Harmon
Often when we look back in time, we find connections we hadn’t noticed before.
Here are a few examples. A mansion is built on Missoula’s north side, overlooking the city. A Helena schoolgirl gets a chance to go to the University of Montana, graduating with a degree in English in 1938. A man born in St. Paul, Minn., moves to Missoula and becomes fascinated by a new invention called radio in 1922.
Those seem to be three random events. But they soon will connect.
No. 1: Thomas L. Greenough was born in 1851 in Iowa. His family later moved to Kansas, where he spent his teenage years. When he left home, he moved to Texas and later to Colorado, South Dakota and Silver City, New Mexico.
He became involved in the timber industry, railroad construction work and mining. It was in mining that he made his fortune.
Greenough eventually settled in Missoula, where he engaged famed architect A. J. Gibson to design a three-story mansion on the north hills. It was an incredible home.
All was well until the late 1950s. Then a new interstate highway system was proposed. Wouldn’t you know it ... as designed, Interstate-90 would slice right through the center of the mansion!
One of Greenough’s daughters, Ruth, offered to give the mansion to the city – free (other than moving costs). Perhaps the city could use it for a historical museum, or the like. The city politely said “no.”
What to do with it then?
No. 2: Ruth Greenough happened to be married to Arthur J. Mosby, a local land developer. Together they decided to undertake the monumental task of moving the Greenough mansion from the north hills (the Rattlesnake area) to the south hills (specifically, what was called “Leisure Highlands” golf course). But how? The structure was huge.
They came up with what was really the simplest, and probably the only, solution: Slice it into three vertical parts that could be transported over roads and bridges, and reassemble the mansion at the south hills site! And, that’s how “The Mansion,” came to sit high above the city on Ben Hogan Drive.
Unfortunately, The Mansion burned to the ground on June 11, 1992. But like the Phoenix, a year later, on the same foundation, “Shadow’s Keep” emerged, a fine restaurant that occupies the site to this day.
No. 3: Arthur J. Mosby, in addition to being a land developer, was also the man I referred to earlier as “fascinated by a new invention” called radio.
In 1931, he created Missoula’s first radio station, KGVO. adding a TV station, KMSO-TV, in 1954. KMSO-TV later became KECI-TV-13.
According to the Montana Broadcasters Association, “One of Mosby's early employees was Paul Harvey, who told his national audience on the day of A. J. Mosby's death: ‘He will be buried in the shelter of the white-fanged Rockies in the valley which he watered with his sweat and fertilized with his footprints through a fruitful lifetime.’”
The broadcasting connection also involves two local women of note, associated with Mosby and the Greenough mansion.
Violet Elizabeth “Vi” Thomson (1909-2001), a 1938 University of Montana alum in English & Drama, worked for Mosby in the early days of what is now KECI-TV, first in sales, and later as host of a popular local events program.
She told an interviewer of her days at UM, “It was a wonderful time of life, it really was. It was a more innocent time of life. I could have walked from one end of that campus to the other at any time of the night and felt perfectly safe. It was study and fun, laughter and friends and hard work, and it was very satisfying. I'd advise everybody to go.”
The other notable woman is Melissa Mooney. At one time a sales associate at KECI-TV (the Mosby connection), Melissa is now the Broker/Owner of the real estate firm, Next Home Mountain Life, and with her husband, Reed, the owner of Shadows Keep Restaurant, built on the foundation of the (Greenough) Mansion restaurant.
The couple also owns The Highlands Golf Club and “1889,” a steak and seafood restaurant in the old Mercantile building downtown.
Talk about connections to the past. See you next week!